Food Resources and their Transformation - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 124

they either wrote themselves such treatises
on cookery as those produced by people of
importance in the Abbāsid period or had
these topics written for them. Those who
aspired to refinement in 4th/10th cen-
tury Badād, the urafā , had strict rules
in this matter. The rulers had huge kitch-
ens for themselves and their court, well
stocked and equipped, staffed by numer-
ous cooks and their assistants, under the
direction of officers such as the anagīr ,
the ādd al-arābāna and the ustādār
al-uba at the court of the Mamlūks, the
kilārı baı , “master of the larder” and
his subordinates like the pekir ba , etc.,
all supplied with their provisions by the
maba emīni and his staff at the Ottoman
Palace.
The quest for the exotic, the partial
adoption of the cuisine of foreigners, espe-
cially when their civilization enjoys a cer-
tain prestige, is another means by which
the élite may demonstrate its distinction
from ordinary folk. Hence, in the Arab
world, the vogue for Iranian dishes, which
seems to have begun in pre-Islamic times
and was very pronounced in the Abbāsid
period, and later the fashion for things
Turkish. European influence began in the
period of the Crusades, and has naturally
been very powerful since the 19th century,
as all modern cookery-books demonstrate.
Deep though its influence has been (see,
for example, the influence of Russian diet
in Central Asia, and how this trend has
been resisted by the Muslim 'clergy', who
call potatoes 'food of Satan' and toma-
toes 'fruits made of human blood' ), in
all countries the traditional dishes retain
their popularity. Conversely, Muslim
diet exercised a pronounced influence on
Christian Europe in the Middle Ages.

6. Factors of secular ideology in food
We can class as ideological the recom-
mendations or prescriptions which are
based either on a rational deduction from
various principles and assumptions, or on
the Divine will elucidated in greater or
less degree by reasoning. Recommenda-
tions and prescriptions of this sort play an
important part in food habits. We have
seen above how certain of them are con-
nected with differences in diet according
to social groups and we shall now deal
with some others, beginning with the non-
religious ones.
Certain general ideas which are pru-
dent deductions from experience are
handed on by popular tradition. Thus
we have a list of nourishing foods, and
of those which cause wind. But gener-
alizations of a “magic” type are often
found: they can grow up from a basis of
real attributes which have been observed
(birds are timorous, testicles are connected
with sexual activity, honey is sweet, etc.),
or be deduced from systems of symbolic
connexions (yellow is beneficial, black
is ill-omened). But these wide and rash
generalizations are based on the magic
principles of contagion by propinquity,
the law of similarity and of opposites, etc.
Thus we have seen that in north-western
Arabia it is believed that whoever eats
birds' hearts becomes himself timorous;
similarly medical treatises explain that
sheep's liver, heart or kidneys strengthen
the liver, heart or kidneys of whoever eats
them, while to eat sheep's brains causes
loss of memory and stupidity because the
sheep is senseless and stupid; in present-
day Morocco young boys newly-circum-
cised are made to drink soup made from
sheep's testicles to strengthen them, and
it is also the recognized diet for people
who are exhausted. alwā made with
saffron has been recommended because
yellow is a source of gaiety. Honey with